hamburgers and doms

Hi again! Sorry it's been so long--I've had a lot of exciting things going on the past week and a half!

First: Weekend in Hamburg. One of my friends from the program has a friend who lives in Hamburg, so we made a weekend trip up there. Hamburg is a gorgeous city--it's historically been a huge port city, so many important people have been through Hamburg at one point or another. We took a train on Friday morning and made it to Hamburg around 5:00, where we met up with Melly and took the S-Bahn back to her house. She lives with her parents who both speak only German, so our German skills were really put to the test! We spent Friday night taking a boat tour of Hamburg's harbor and walking around the Old City--it really reminded me of Amsterdam because of all the canals and bridges. We slept in on Saturday, and then proceeded to see a couple of churches, the shopping district, and of course the Rathaus (city hall). We ate dinner with Melly's parents--I have yet to have any German food I don't like! On Sunday, Melly's parent's drove us around so we could see a football (soccer) stadium, and we drove under the Elbe River! We also walked under the Elbe--there's this old tunnel that is still used by commuters, etc. to quickly cross the Elbe. Another highlight was eating hamburgers in Hamburg :) We headed back to Münster on Sunday without any train problems--as much fun as we had in Hamburg, it really felt good to be back home in Münster! This picture is of us in front of the Hamburg Rathaus.

This last week was really a blur of classes, homework, and preparations for the rest of the semester. I'm still really enjoying my classes, but the enormity of picking paper topics is looming...I'll be a lot happier with that when I know what I'm doing! Other highlights from the week were dinners with host families (they're so much fun to talk to!), meeting the son of a friend of my advisor at Luther--the whole group had a "play date" with him and he showed us some fun places to go in Münster where we can probably make some friends.

Yesterday was our first group trip--we went to Köln to see the Dom (cathedral) and the rest of the city. I spent the day in museums...who'da thunk? I started out at the Römish-Germanisches Museum, which is dedicated to showing the history of the Roman Empire in Germany and Köln in particular--the museum is actually built on top of the site where they discovered a gigantic Roman building. The museum had a few cool mosaics, and tons of Roman tombstones and everyday objects. I had a conversation with one of the museum guards who apparently had his razor sharp American-radar on, and we talked about a few of the different objects in the museum, and he told me about the other museum I went to in Köln.

I can never remember the name of this museum, but it featured art from the middle ages through the Impressionists. This museum's collection was really concentrated around art from Köln, but they had a few Rembrandts and one Cranach painting, so I was happy. I didn't make it up to the top floor to see the Impressionist paintings because the museum was closing for the day. Next time, I guess :)

The other highlight of the day was getting a tour of the Köln Dom--I'm pretty sure it's one of the largest cathedrals in Europe. I love cathedrals (the picture reflects my love of both cathedrals and jumping pictures), but I'm still deciding if the tour of this one added to my appreciation for this particular cathedral or took away from it. Construction of the cathedral started way back in the day (and by that I mean somewhere around the tenth or eleventh century) because Köln was a huge port/trading city with a lot of rich people who were willing to fund a cathedral. Construction stopped and started at various points throughout history whenever there was money or interest, and was only completed at the end of the nineteenth century as a majestic show of German nationalism after it became a country in 1871. I mentioned that to one of our professors, and we talked a little bit about how a lot of buildings in Germany have more than one meaning--it makes it really interesting!

Well, this has been really long. I have a presentation tomorrow, so I'm going to go finish that!

karneval

Good morning! This weekend was our first "real" weekend in Münster, and it just so happened to be Karneval, which is a huge party. From what I understand, it's pretty much the German version of Mardi Gras--it takes place the Monday before Ash Wednesday and has historically been a day in which all social norms go out the window and everyone celebrates! The day started out with a gigantic parade, which had some of the craziest floats I've ever seen. The announcers for the parade were hilarious--they were announcing different things going on during the parade, and just providing comments on everything under the sun. I was happy to discover that German parades also hand out candy--that meant lots of free German chocolate! After the parade, we went around the city for a while and ate street food that was super good (french fries and bratwurts, go figure) and just observed the general craziness that was going on. The only bad thing about Karneval was the fact that it's been cold lately for Germany, and so it wasn't very fun to be outside for much of it. Here are a couple pictures from the parade--everyone knows Germans wear leiderhosen all of the time, right? The one on the bottom is one example of the floats in the parade; many were made of fiberglass(?) and were gigantic sculptures of tons of different things--we saw ones of animals, people, and all of the floats were pulled by tractors! W even saw a John Deere. Way to represent, midwest.
On Sunday, Hailey's host dad took us to a volleyball game. The local Münster team is apparently pretty good, and they were playing against a team from Berlin. It was really fun being at the game--there was a pep band of sorts, and everyone at the game would clap on beat to the drum (if you've ever sat next to me in any sort of setting in which clapping on beat is required, you know how difficult that was for me...), and Münster ended up winning the game!

Dinner last night was a grill-out with my host family, Meghan, Hailey, and one of my host dad's piano students. They were all really curious about whether or not Americans grilled out in the snow, and we tried to explain the concept of tailgating to them; they think we're nuts. I'm really glad that I was placed with my host family--I'm still having so much fun getting to know them. On Saturday, Hailey and I played in the snow with my younger host sisters, and discovered the area around Gremmendorf a little bit--I can't wait for spring because this city is going to be so pretty!

This was a little long--sorry about that! Auf Wiedersehen!

cobblestones

This post is entitled "cobblestones" because I have developed a very love/hate relationship with them in the past few days. I think they're gorgeous, and the streets here in Münster wouldn't look the same with pavement; however, they are also very slippery when wet. I discovered this this morning when I went searching for a coffee shop with free wi-fi where I could finish my German Aufsatz (essay) and check my email. I got a little bit turned around in the Altstadt, which is ironic considering I was using a gigantic cathedral as my landmark for the cafe I wanted. Who thought you could lose a cathedral?


We started classes on Monday, and a few of us took a "first day of school" picture in front of the community center where we have our classes. As you can tell from the picture, we were really excited. I really like my classes so far--German grammar frustrates me to no end, but I'm getting better at speaking, which is what I really care about. The other classes sound like they'll be a lot of fun--we have to do a couple of presentations for our Paideia II class, and it sounds like we basically get to choose the speed of my seminar class, so if we get all the work done in two months, then we're done!

My friends Hailey, Megan, and I have been eating dinner with each others' host families a lot this week, and it has been really fun to get to know the other families. Tonight, we're eating at Hailey's house with her host mother, father, and sister. We ate with my host family last night, and my host mother made fahnkuchen (pancakes) for us, and we put nutella and jam and applesauce on them and they were amazing. We ended up talking with my host parents and sisters for a couple hours about tons of different subjects--we talked about our families and friends in the United States, my host sister's schools, our classes here, and Münster in general. It's been a crazy cold winter for all of Europe compared to what they're used to, so all of our host families have been warning us about the frigid temperatures we're likely to face on any given day. It's not pleasantly warm outside, but it's no January in Iowa, either. The weather's supposed to turn nicer in a couple weeks, so it'll be fun to be able to really enjoy all of the outdoor activities Münster has to offer.

Bis Später!

münster--finally!

Hello all! I finally made it to Münster--three flights and 24 hours of travel later! My parents took me to Minneapolis on Wednesday night, and I stayed with my friends Kristin and Hannah who drove me to the airport last Thursday morning for our first flight of the day from Minneapolis to Chicago. We had a bit of a layover in Chicago, so we passed the time by playing cards and talking about how excited we were for Münster!

Our next flight took us from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany. We flew with Lufthansa, and it was easily the coolest plane I've ever seen. There were STAIRS in it. No one else in my group thought it was quite as cool as I did, but that's okay. I tried to watch a couple of movies and sleep on the way over, but that didn't work so well, and we were all exhausted by the time we got to Frankfurt at about 7:00 am German time. We had another flight to catch to Münster, so we made our way through the Frankfurt airport, drank some free coffee, and caught our last short flight to Münster, where our professor met us.

Once we got into Münster, we stored our luggage and walked around the city to keep ourselves awake. I was so happy to see the cathedrals and the castle again, as well as the rest of the city! Because we were all so tired, we went back to our classroom for a little while before we met our host families and just sat there, trying to make conversations that made sense and not always succeeding.

We met our host families at a cafe near the Münster Hauptbahnhof (train station), and went home with them. My host family is amazing--they're very welcoming, and they all think I'm best friends with Barack Obama because I have a picture of him on my screensaver from when he spoke at Luther! They only speak German to me, which is good because it forces me to use my not-so-good German, which is hopefully getting better!

Today's the first day of classes, so that's where I'm off to right now--I hope all is well with all of you!